Bad vista install, can't recover, help please =(

[eyeCpc]

On a 250gb drive you wouldn't expect to see more then 232-234gb once partitioned and the OS is on. Drives are sold by decimal units of measurement while Windows uses the binary type. A 500gb drive sees about 465gb available in Windows less what space is used for the installation itself.

Besides GParted or the other partitioning program Mak213 referred to you can also use a drive nuker that basically wipes a drive 100%. A program like Active Killdisk is one you would use if going to sell a used system to insure personal data is completely wiped off of a hard drive. Active@ Kill Disk. Hard Drives Eraser. Free Download.

A tool like this will handle anything left on the drive while GParted would normally take care of any partitions in general. The thing however is your mention of reformatting rather then deleting C along with deletion of the hidden recovery partition but not the X partition.

Instead of trying to reformat an unwanted partition deletion of both that and the Vista primary to a totally new primary for Vista to go on was the advice given before. All you have to do now is simply boot up with GParted and nuke the two followed by seeing a fresh single primary replace them.

 

[mysacrement]

Okay after tryin a few more times this is what I am looking at now....
Once inside Gparted , there is a blank partition 233gb absolutely clean, nothing on it, no OS, no other partitions. the drive is clean and formatted with an unknown filesystem, with the partition name being "/dev/sda1", there is nothing else to be seen on the screen except this. "/dev/sda1, Size 232.88GB, Used 0, Unused 0, Flags 0

This is all AFTER formatting this drive once before into an NTFS filesystem using Gparted.

So, next I would insert Vista disc to install, but since setup will not continue I select "Repair Vista". It leaves me with options all of which fail to work. The last option is to enter CMD, which i do. Arriving into CMD it puts me in a directory of "X:sources"

In this directory about 4 dirs, and about 128 or so files.

If i move to drive C: or D: ect... try to format X: it says cannot format because drive is write protected.

Hope this helps explain where i'm at , thanks again for all your guys' help i'm really in a pinch here with this one. =(

 

[KSoD]

If the drive has been formatted you will have to install Vista. Not repair it. A format gets rid of the information on the drive.

 

[mysacrement]

Correct, except that even after formatting the drive via Vista's setup, and also using Gparted, it stops during the installation and simply quits. the disc stops spining and it does nothing... I'm going to download Active@ Kill Disc and try it.. Simply put, I can't get the drive to clear 71.72mb of used space. no matter what.

 

[[t..o..m]]

It's a hp computer. The vista disk they have given you has probably had modifications done to it to create seperate x and d drives to hold certain setup/backup information.

If you want to get rid of them you might need a new/fresh vista disk.

 

[mysacrement]

I can see where you are coming from, however i'm using an unbranded purchased disc of Vista so i think my problem still lies therein the HDD itself... I simply am unable to install anything to the drive because it will not format completely..

 

[eyeCpc]

How old is the drive? If the write not read heads are going one problem is being able to read from a drive while not being able to write to it like seeing a new primary created. I've run into this on a few systems lately where once the drive was replaced everything went right on. But those were also older ide drives simply worn out.

 

[mysacrement]

It's brand new Just bought the laptop a week ago. =)

 

[eyeCpc]

You just voided the warranty on it I hope you know since it is brand new. The drive could be defective and simply need to replaced under the warranty you now may have made somewhat useless since you wiped the important recovery as well as serial number information off of it.

 

[mysacrement]

You just voided the warranty on it I hope you know since it is brand new. The drive could be defective and simply need to replaced under the warranty you now may have made somewhat useless since you wiped the important recovery as well as serial number information off of it.

Well fortunately I figured out the entire problem... I believ in a previous post I explained that the X:\ drive was a temp dir used during the recovery setup of vista. not a partition like i thought.

anyways I am up and running with a fresh install of vista and everything is peachie so its all good now.

Thanks all for your time and consideration much appreciated i'll definately come here next time!